Episodes

  • When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling’s History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City

    When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling’s History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City
    Oct 17 2024
    Dr. Felicia George explains how number lotteries in the city’s Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods in the 20th century, although illegal and rife with exploitation, also raised some Black Detroiters out of poverty and created an important social support in a community stressed by racial discrimination and job insecurity. Dr. George is an adjunct … Continue reading When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling’s History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City
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    26 mins
  • Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008

    Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008
    Sep 3 2024
    Dr. Jesse Chanin describes how the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) gained power and influence in a region hostile to unions from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s by building trust in the community with transparent and democratic decision-making and a focus on racial and economic justice to improve the lives of the New Orleans … Continue reading Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008
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    47 mins
  • Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’

    Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’
    Jul 25 2024
    Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals, commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson’s … Continue reading Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’
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    32 mins
  • Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit

    Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit
    Jun 13 2024
    Dr. Say Burgin explains that contrary to the common belief that white activists were purged from the Black freedom movement in the mid-1960 and 1970s, Black-led organizations in Detroit – including the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Workers—called on white activists to organize within their own white … Continue reading Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit
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    39 mins
  • Hillbilly Highway: Charting White Migration from Appalachia to the Industrial Midwest

    Hillbilly Highway: Charting White Migration from Appalachia to the Industrial Midwest
    May 9 2024
    Dr. Max Fraser shares the often overlooked story of the “hillbilly highway,” the route nearly eight million poor, rural, white Americans took in the 20th century from economically depressed areas in the Southeastern and Southern United States toward higher paying factory jobs in the Upper South and Midwest. He explains how the social advancement and … Continue reading Hillbilly Highway: Charting White Migration from Appalachia to the Industrial Midwest
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    44 mins
  • Betty Friedan’s Labor Roots

    Betty Friedan’s Labor Roots
    Mar 28 2024
    Rachel Shteir shares how Betty Friedan’s early experience as a labor reporter for the Federated Press informed her later work as a famed women’s rights activist, author of The Feminine Mystique, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Although Friedan’s activism shaped the American women’s movement in the latter half of the 20th century, … Continue reading Betty Friedan’s Labor Roots
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    34 mins
  • The UAW’s Southern Gamble in Foreign-Owned Factories

    The UAW’s Southern Gamble in Foreign-Owned Factories
    Mar 4 2024
    Dr. Stephen Silvia explains how the UAW built a cooperative relationship with workers’ councils and unions at foreign automotive companies, but has nevertheless struggled to organize those companies’ vehicle factories in the southern United States since the 1990s due to anti-labor politics and the companies’ shared anti-union playbooks. Silvia is a professor in the School … Continue reading The UAW’s Southern Gamble in Foreign-Owned Factories
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    57 mins
  • Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence and Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era

    Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence and Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era
    Dec 14 2023
    Dr. Matthew Lassiter shares stories uncovered in Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era, a collaborative digital exhibit created by undergraduate history students documenting nearly 200 civilians killed between 1957 and 1973 by the Detroit Police Department and other law enforcement agencies in the … Continue reading Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence and Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era
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    44 mins